Acceptable Use Policy

Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) resources are deployed, configured, and operated to serve a large, diverse user community. It is important that all users are aware of and abide by TACC Usage Policies. Failure to do so may result in suspension or cancellation of the project and associated allocation and closure of all associated logins. Illegal transgressions will be addressed through University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) and/or legal authorities.

Use of Protected Software and Data

PIs and users agree to NOT install or use any software or data that falls under the following protected categories International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Export Administration Regulations (EAR), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), Personally Identifiable Information (PII), or any other protected control without first contacting security@tacc.utexas.edu, an appropriate agreement Business Associate Agreement (BAA), Technology Control Plan (TCP), Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU), or other relevant agreements) between the UT-Austin and the PI or home intuition must be in place before such software or data can be installed or used on any TACC resource. Violations of this policy will result in the immediate removal of said software and/or data and deactivation of related projects, allocations, and user accounts.

Policies for TACC Users

Users must abide by the following policies. Failure to do so will lead to disciplinary actions.

Sharing of User Credentials is strictly prohibited

Users are only allowed one account per person.

PI's are responsible for notifying TACC when project users should be deactivated due to the departure of the user or termination of the project.

Never infringe upon someone else's copyright. It is a violation of TACC policy and federal law to participate in copyright infringement.

Never try to circumvent login procedures on any TACC resource or otherwise attempt to gain access where

you are not allowed. Never deliberately scan or probe any information resource without prior authorization.

Computing resources may not be used for commercial purposes or personal gain.

Disciplinary Actions

Punishment for infractions includes, but is not limited to the following.

Written or verbal warnings

Revocation of access privileges to TACC systems

Termination of project(s) at TACC

Criminal prosecution

Passwords

TACC users must choose a strong password that should be unique to your TACC username. All passwords are required to meet the following criteria:

Must not contain your account name or parts of your full name.

Must be a minimum of 8 characters in length.

Must contain characters from at least three of the following: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

Utilization

TACC has documented the purpose and proper use of resources and services via a series of user guides and other web-based documents available on the TACC web site and TACC User Portal. Users assume the responsibility for becoming familiar with this documentation, particularly relating to issues such as adherence to resource limits, proper and considerate use of the batch queuing system, understanding the purpose and proper use of file systems and storage services, and proper use of TACC resources.

Use of TACC resources should be used only for work directly related to the project for which the resources were requested and granted. TACC resources should only be used for documented or obvious intended purpose.

The login or front-end nodes of the TACC compute and visualization clusters are reserved for compiling, loading, and preparing to submit jobs to run in a batch queue. Running compute or I/O bound processes on these nodes will cause excess overhead and affect the ability of the general user community to use the systems effectively. Processes inappropriate to execute on these nodes will automatically be killed and the user notified. Users repeatedly violating this policy will be denied access to the system and must contact TACC before access is restored.

The TACC data storage resources are intended to provide the user community with a high-speed, shared storage facility that is available to applications that span multiple TACC resources. Data stored on any TACC data storage resource must be associated with research projects approved by TACC. Users storing data not meeting this criterion may lose all rights to use TACC resources. All users assume the responsibility for reading the information contained in the appropriate system User Guide.

Account Deactivation Policy

Accounts will be deactivated for one of the following reasons:

PI Request

An account deactivation request by a PI will result in the account being denied access to use the PI's project's allocation if the account does not have access to another active project.

Project Expiration

Upon project expiration, all accounts (PI and user) will be immediately denied access to the allocation, and TACC-issued user certificates will be revoked unless users have access to other active projects. All batch and remote job submissions will subsequently be rejected.

Violation of TACC Policy

Any user account determined by TACC to be in violation of a TACC policy will immediately be denied access to all TACC resources without notification.

Account Inactivity

User accounts will be deactivated due to inactivity after 120 calendar days. This will be done automatically and users will have to submit a ticket to have their account reactivated. Any successful login to a TACC resource (including the TACC User Portal) will reset this timer.

Data Retention

Upon project expiration or termination of an active project all data in /home and /work will remain on TACC resources for thirty (30) days. All data stored in the TACC archival storage system will be maintained for a period of eighteen (18) months and will be read only.

User Support

TACC users are encouraged to request assistance from TACC support when necessary. All requests for support must be submitted through the TACC Consulting Request System. Exceptions to this policy will be handled on a case-by-case basis. Special project collaborations are examples of situations requiring direct communication between TACC and the user community.

TACC support will provide advice to users regarding the development, porting, debugging, and optimizing of codes, and in the proper use of TACC resources. Support does not include the actual development, porting, debugging, and optimization of codes.

Refund Requests

Users of TACC compute resources may submit via the appropriate User Portal (TACC or XSEDE) refund requests for jobs that terminate abnormally. TACC support members will grant requests that can be attributed to hardware and system software failure. Requests will be granted for up to 8 wall clock hours of compute time (8 times the number of processors or cores used by the job). Users are required to implement a checkpoint/restart capability in their codes to minimize the amount of lost cycles due to job failure.

TACC User News

Information regarding important TACC activities, including system availability and upgrades, TACC training classes, allocation renewal notifications, and holiday consulting coverage will be communicated to the user community via TACC User News. Upon receiving an allocation the PI is automatically subscribed to all relevant TACC User News categories, as is any user for which the PI creates a login. Users may unsubscribe from TACC User News, but still assume the responsibility for the information contained therein. TACC User News can be accessed through the TACC portal, http://portal.tacc.utexas.edu, or the TACC home page, http://www.tacc.utexas.edu.

TACC Citation

Please reference TACC in any research report, journal or publication that requires citation of any author's work. The recognition of the TACC resources you used to perform research is important for acquiring funding for the next generation hardware, support services, and our Research & Development activities in HPC, visualization, data storage, and grid infrastructure. The minimal content of a citation should include:

Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) The University of Texas at Austin

Our suggested acknowledgement is *:

The authors acknowledge the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin for providing {HPC, visualization, or storage} resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper. URL: http://www.tacc.utexas.edu